Written by Kerry Scott and Maya Madere // Photos by Colette McInerney
In the spring of 2024, Kerry Scott and Maya Madere traveled to the New River Gorge to attempt Still Life, one of the area’s most iconic and elusive sport climbs. What began as a shared projecting experience became something larger: a reflection on competition, friendship, ambition, and the evolving relationships both climbers had with the sport - and with each other.
Presented as two distinct perspectives on the same experience, Scott and Madere’s reflections explore the tension between competition and support, the emotional complexity of high-level climbing, and the process of redefining success beyond individual achievement.
Kerry Scott
Learning to Compete
I can’t talk about Still Life without talking about Maya, and I can’t talk about Maya without talking about competing.
I stumbled into climbing through a local sporting goods store and eventually became the youngest member of a competitive team at a nearby gym. I never thought much about why I wanted to compete. My team did it, so naturally I did too. By the time I was 16, I had competed in eight national championships and qualified twice for the Youth National Team. Before long, competition climbing had become a core part of my identity.
I wanted to excel, but I also hated competing. During competitions, my mantra became: “If I just let go, this would all be over.” The pressure felt overwhelming after so much preparation and expectation. I never figured out how to manage my nerves, and I never understood that something serious could also be enjoyable.
Throughout this time, I also internalized a feeling that being competitive was a negative trait for a young woman. I talked a lot about loving my teammates and not caring about results, while quietly envying how easily the boys could say they wanted to beat each other. I couldn’t reconcile my desire to win with my genuine friendships with the girls on my team, especially when I felt like I couldn’t vocalize that tension. The reality was simple: there were limited spots for the next competition or the national team. No matter how much we cared about each other, not all of us could have one.
I started to view the other girls on my team as obstacles instead of teammates. I convinced myself that working harder in isolation would give me an advantage. I trained more alone, became vague about when I climbed outside practice, and slowly distanced myself from other women in the sport, all while trying to convince myself I wasn’t competitive.
Burnout and Rediscovery
By the time I aged out of youth competitions, I was deeply burned out. In college in North Carolina, I stepped away from major competitions but still found some success on the local circuit. I became comfortable being one of the strongest female climbers in the area, and when more strong women entered the scene, I noticed myself beginning to pull away again.
At first, I wasn’t fully aware of what I was doing, but eventually I began to recognize the pattern and question my attitude. After graduating, I decided to move to Colorado, knowing it would mean immersing myself in a community where I was far from the strongest woman around. I didn’t quite know how to navigate that shift, and I found myself climbing mostly with men.
Around the same time, I returned to elite competitions with a different goal: I wanted to figure out how to actually enjoy competing. For the first time, I was competing because I chose to, not because I felt expected to.
That’s when Maya started inviting me to competitions. I usually didn’t perform as well as she did, but I was gaining momentum and nipping at her heels. Instead of pulling away, she pulled me in. We trained together and talked openly about strategy, mindset, and attitude. She cheered for me loudly enough that I could always pick her voice out of the crowd, and more than once it carried me through a few extra moves. It was a stark contrast to the attitude I had as a kid and a clear example of who I wanted to become.
Maya is openly competitive. She doesn’t hide it or soften it. While she wants to win, she doesn’t want an easy path. She wants other women to show up and perform their best, as this brings out the best in her as well. Slowly, two truths became clear to me: being competitive and being supportive are not mutually exclusive.
At the same time, Maya’s love for the sport also stood out over her desire to win. She always wants to do all the qualifying boulders, even if she had already secured a spot in finals. She inspired me to pull my attention back to my own love of climbing. Competing started to feel like a fun sesh with other strong women, and I achieved better results not in spite of that, but because of it.
Redefining Success
In 2023, we went to Austin, TX for Elite National Team Trials together. Unfortunately, Maya had to withdraw from the competition due to injury, but she supported me through to my first adult national final. The genuine happiness she felt for me as I achieved a lifelong dream will stick with me for the rest of my life. I had the spot she wanted, but she was just as happy for me as she would have been for herself. She led by example, and truly showed me how to embrace my competitive side, and support other women, all at the same time.
I balanced my return to competition climbing with a desire to push my limits on rock as well. While less overtly competitive than actual competition climbing, I felt myself wrestling with similar feelings. When I was struggling to balance the demands of both worlds, the old habits of comparison started to creep back in. Maya gave me a much needed, rude awakening, “What, are you just trying to be better than others?”. I could feel myself slipping back to a person I no longer wanted to be- burned out and not climbing for the reasons that felt right to me. As I stepped back from competitions, I knew I wanted to bring the lessons I'd learned into my outdoor climbing. In a way, the roles were starting to reverse. I had more outdoor experience and a stronger resume on paper, but Maya was quickly catching up.
I started showing up for Maya at our mutual projects without my shoes. It was a real investment in driving and hiking, but it gave me space to redefine what I actually wanted out of climbing. Maya quickly sent both harder routes and boulders than me. As she excelled, I noticed something: I was genuinely excited for her. I wanted to make sure that was real.
That’s where Still Life comes in.
Sights Set on Still Life
The New River Gorge was my first home crag. The southern sandbag culture, the delicate balance of tech and power, and the stark cruxes taught me to throw all notions of grades out the window. The tall, blank, cliffs would highlight my strengths and expose my weaknesses in the span of a few bolts. The highs and lows of projecting beat me down, but also redefined what I viewed as possible for myself. As I worked my way through iconic Porter Jarrard, Doug Reed, Mike Williams, Brian McCray, and Scott Franklin lines, Joel Brady’s Still Life (re-opened by Matt Bosley post-break) slowly came into my sights. The short, powerful line captures the attention of every climber that passes by, but the chains are guarded by a heartbreak last move. Throughout my time at the New, every climber I'd ever seen shoot their shot on this iconic testpiece was a man.
Being the First Female Ascent of Still Life had been a long dream of mine that finally felt within reach. However, somewhere along the way, I started to gain an appreciation that a first female ascent matters most when it lifts women up, rather than puts them in competition. It no longer mattered to me who the FFA was, but I wanted to be a part of the process. With a new perspective, a broader appreciation for what I want out of climbing, and a genuine excitement to share my favorite place with Maya, I insisted she join me on my endeavor to try Still Life, knowing she may clip the chains first - and welcoming it.
For me, that was the real win.
Maya Madere
Drawn to the New
In the fall of 2023, Kerry Scott invited me to the New River Gorge to try her project with her. Still Life, an iconic power endurance testpiece at the lakeside Coliseum crag, had been high on her life list since childhood, and in the 25-odd years since it was established had yet to see a female ascent. That November trip was rainy and cold; in the humid winter conditions I could barely fathom doing many of the moves, much less linking them all in a single go. I reluctantly agreed to give Still Life another shot when we returned the following Spring. It felt way above my pay grade, but I wasn’t going to turn down another trip to the New with Kerry - plus, she’d promised to belay me on whatever else I wanted to try if Still Life wasn’t panning out.
Kerry and I first met in France in 2018 on separate but coincidental trips to Céüse, where we were introduced by a mutual friend and immediately became inseparable. Every night we’d race the setting sun down from the cliff and cook dinner together at her cozy Airbnb, both standing over the stove passing a bottle of wine back and forth and laughing till we cried. That trip was less than a week long, but by the end of it I knew I’d made a friend for life. Over the next few years, I dragged her to every comp I could reasonably manage, where she ended up having a terrific time and rediscovering that comps can be fun and not just stressful. In return, she dragged me to every outdoor project she could convince me to try, where I ended up having a terrific time and learning that climbing at your limit outside can also be really fun and not (necessarily) heinously uncomfortable. I had barely even heard of the New when Kerry proposed a month-long trip, but I’d learned enough at that point to trust her that I was going to love it.
The Process
In March of 2024, we began trying Still Life in earnest. We got along much better with the route in the crisp springtime conditions, and pieces started coming together. But we quickly ran into another obstacle when both of us came down with a nearly debilitating flu. We tempered our expectations, knowing that the 7 days we had on that trip was probably insufficient to recover to full sending form. Still, we aimed to give ourselves a fighting chance - we cooked huge vats of nourishing caldo de res (my mom’s coveted family recipe), brewed gallons of fresh lemon ginger tea, and strategically spaced our climbing sessions with cozy recovery days while still climbing on the route as much as we could.
Illness notwithstanding, Kerry quickly dialed in the intro moves of the route and unlocked unique beta for the crux boulder that guards the chains. Still Life is composed of a stout, gently overhanging, upper-end 5.13 followed by a decent rest and topped off with a steep power endurance sequence which I estimate goes at around V11. The beta we each used diverged dramatically in this section. Kerry traversed left onto tiny crimps and made a big right hand move up to a positive rail in the middle of the roof, while I used an intermediate gaston pinch to bump my left hand to the same rail and came in to match. Our sequences converged at the set up for the final deadpoint, a wild throw off a miniscule ironband crimp to either a two-pad sloper (Maya) or a more positive but perilously distant jug (Kerry), the hardest single move by a wide margin. Within a few days, Kerry was falling on that notorious last move ground-up. Inspired by her progress, I began to believe the route might be within reach for me too, and links gradually started to feel more plausible. By the end of the week, I had made it up to the last move from the ground. On the last day of our trip Kerry, who had been asymptotically approaching the send for several days, actually stuck the move for almost a second before tragically peeling off on the backswing in. It quite literally couldn’t have been any closer.
Staying Grounded
As the season progressed and time pressure mounted, we helped each other steer clear of the fine line between constructive motivation and destructive obsession. The responsibility of supporting not just my own process but Kerry’s as well prompted me to stay positive and compassionate with her, and by extension, with myself. We reminded each other daily how lucky we were just to be there, taking time to slow down and enjoy the experience of 1being in the New in springtime.
Early in the trip, we’d spotted a jellylike cluster of frog eggs incubating in a large trailside puddle on the way in to the crag, which we routinely stopped to visit and observe. We watched the tiny black dots at the center of each egg grow barely discernible tails and squirm in somersaults within the safety of their transparent globes. When we returned 3 weeks later in April, we were delighted to find the eggs replaced by dozens of plump tadpoles darting skittishly about in their murky puddle home. Every day we stopped to watch them swim, fastidiously refraining from intervening in the course of nature, even when (to our dismay!) a small salamander appeared and began gobbling up tadpoles at an alarming rate.
Then we’d continue to the crag with our spirits bolstered by the vibrant spring, hang out by the lake in the sunshine, and take turns falling on the last move of Still Life over and over and over again. After a few days of this, our confidence was wavering. I was making progress, climbing better and more efficiently with each try, but sticking the last move from the ground still felt a long way off. Kerry hadn’t yet had another go as close as her heartbreaker in March, and worried that she’d missed her chance to send. Then, with maybe 3 or 4 days left on the trip - less than enough time to heal a split - she sliced open her fingertip on the crucial second-to-last hold. My heart sank as I lowered her off and saw the gash across her left pointer finger. She was right there, poised for the send, but I knew that hold was critical. I did my best to remain outwardly optimistic even as plans to return in the fall started forming in the back of my mind.
Kerry seemed downtrodden, but oddly calm. If I was her, I’d be so pissed right now, I thought. But she sat quietly, contemplated the route for a while, waited for the split to stop bleeding and carefully wrapped her fingertip with tape. I was almost surprised she wanted to try again; I couldn’t imagine trying to use that crimp with my most critical pad taped. She’d accepted the situation: she had a split, it wasn’t going to heal before the trip was over, and we still had a few more days. Trying with tape was better than not trying at all. She climbed confidently to the final boulder, took the razor crimp just like she always did, bore down on her mummified index finger and soared, improbably, to the final jug. I screamed, half in elation, half disbelief. We’d done it – Still Life had its FFA.
One Last Try
In the following days, I felt a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. The whole process had been so much a team effort, both of us climbing and belaying in turns, that it didn’t feel right to have anyone but Kerry on the other end of the rope. Our goal had been for at least one of us to send, and we’d already achieved it. I felt like I’d been exempted from my least favorite part of the projecting process - being close enough to sending that you feel like you should have done it already. And at that point, I was close. I had one go where I also stuck my version of the final jug, the closer but slightly slopier ledge, for a split second before peeling off.
As the end of the trip approached, I knew my time was running out. I made the last-minute decision to change my flight so I could have one last extra half day on the route - a morning session, which we’d never done before, because we’d have to drive straight from the crag to the airport by midafternoon. Temps were good, but we arrived to find the crux crimp in full direct sun. I gave one attempt, a solid try but not enough. I wasn’t deterred; my first go of the day was usually not my best. We waited as the crimp crept into the shade. I had time for one more try.
Pulling on, I was keenly aware of the absurdity of the situation - last go, last session, last trip of the season, in literally the final hour I could possibly have spent at the New that spring. I’d fallen on the last move dozens of times. Why should this try be any different? Sending was so improbable that I had no choice but to let go of the outcome. In a rare moment of clarity, all I truly wanted was to give it everything I had. I climbed to the crux boulder just as I always did. I took the crimp, just as I always did. If something felt different, I didn’t stop to register it. I felt just as desperate as I always had on the last move, right up until the moment I swung back in - somehow, miraculously, still on the wall.
More Than a Send
Would I have been satisfied if I hadn’t done it? Of course not. But I believe I’d still feel just as lucky to have shared the process of trying Still Life with Kerry. I knew that inviting me to try it was big for her - it represented a shift in her relationship with competition, just as it was a pivotal moment in my relationship with climbing outside.
Before Still Life, I’d never gone on a trip with the sole or even primary purpose of sending one particular climb. I’d never dared to invest myself so fully in a single project, to admit to myself that I wanted it badly enough to plan my entire season around it and face the possibility of walking away empty handed. Kerry brought me along and taught me, by example, how to push my absolute limit on rock - a gift far more valuable than any send.
